My last 5 books: Horror, sci-fi, and French

The first five books of the year. My promise to myself to use every bit of commuting time to read has payed off somewhat. So here are the last 5 books I've read, starting with the oldest first:

1. Låt den rätte komma in, by John Ajvide Lindqvist.
Known abroad as Let the right one in. I'm generally sceptical towards Swedish writers, but this guy has proven me wrong. I couldn't put this book down. It was incredibly gripping. I didn't like that he made so many of the characters sexually or psychologically deviant, though, I guess that has something to do with him trying to make the characters more interesting. Sexual deviance is not necessary for a character to be interesting! I liked Eli a lot more than Oskar, and especially the flashbacks were interesting. The author's take on vampirism was inventive. I have not yet seen the movie, and I'm not sure I will. Movies have a tendency to be bad compared to the book.

2. Himmelstrand, by John Ajvide Lindqvist.
Same author. This book was a lot better than Låt den rätte komma in, and it's obvious that his writing has evolved during the years between his first novel (Låt den rätte komma in) and this one. Himmelstrand was haunting and scary in the cosy creepy way. Without actually saying much until the last 150 pages, there's this overwhelming feeling that something is incredibly, terribly wrong. But just as the characters have no idea what has happened, neither do you. I love how the characters span every single version of horror movie characters: The scared ones who completely break down, the ones who become violent in the face of screaming stress, the idiot ones who think they can solve the problem by hunting it, and the ones who just resign themselves to the end and don't really care. I particularly love that the most "evil" character (if you want to use that word) is a 6-year-old. Awesome book! If this is how good his writing has become, I can't wait to read more from him!

3. Andra vägar, by Karin Tidbeck (red).
This is something as rare as a modern-day Swedish anthology of sci-fi. Ten short stories by more or less known Swedish writers fill these pages. Some of them were outrageous and weird, some of them I really liked, and some were just boring - the way things normally are with anthologies. My personal favourites were numbers 5 and 8. Number 5 is Vomb by Jessica Schiefauer about a couple who decides to have a family, by using the new technology called a vomb. The vomb makes it possible for the parents to shift carrying the baby during the pregnancy. Number 8 is Dykplats Lund by Kristina Hård about an evolved human who works in diving beneath the surface of the ocean, which in this distant year of the future has covered much of the ground we live on today.

4. Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson.
This author was active during the same years as H.P. Lovecraft, both in the horror/supernatural genre. Unlike Lovecraft Benson didn't create his own mythology of Elder Gods, and his stories mostly concerned the supernatural we know: ghosts, spritis, demons, witches and magic. Another difference is that while Lovecraft was American and most of his stories took place in New England, Benson was British and most of his stories take place in Britain. I originally started reading this book in October 2014, but you have to be in a certain mood to read anthologies and I just wasn't. Now I can't imagine why, because this book was glorious. A few of my favourites were: Caterpillars, The Cat, The Other Bed, The Temple, The Wishing-Well, The Step, The Bath-Chair, and The Sanctuary.

5. Pas si fous, ces Français! by Jean-Benoît Nadeau & Julie Barlow
This book was part of the course literature when I studied French at the university, but we only read snippets from it. I thought it seemed interesting back then and I still do. So when I needed to get into French again to prepare for Cologne, I decided to pick it up again and read it from back to back. Unfortunately I hardly had time to read while in Cologne (20 pages in total during the whole week we were there). I was very relieved when I started reading it and realised I understood practically everything, despite the fact that I had hardly used French for 3 years! So this book is written by two French-Canadians who decide to understand France. They spend 2½ years in France and this book describes what they found. They write through the perspective of North Americans and some of the time I was gaping at the book for something they did in France that I found really weird,  and some of the time I was shrugging like what the hell that's not strange, for something the authors thought was strange, but that we do in Sweden too. It's been a ride, an although this book tried to disprove the notion that France is an elitist country/community I still think it is, but I have gained more of an understanding towards their system. Unfortunately, this book is getting on in years. It was published in 2003 and is thus now more than 10 years old. I'd like to know what the authors would say to everything that has happened in France since 2010.

And that's it for now! Five books, three languages, and three genres.

Game completed: Fallout: New Vegas + DLCs

Today I completed New Vegas and it's been quite the ride! From the first go it worked a lot better than Fallout 3, there were a few times when the game froze, but that can happen to the best of them and in this case it was nothing game-breaking.

This game was weird. There was so much crazy involved I sort of started to wonder what the devs were on while making this game :P

So for the main quest I was shot in the head, patched up again, and then chased after the guy who shot me all the way to New Vegas where I paid my way through the front gates. I found the guy, Benny, and making use of my perk Black Widow I seduced him into sleeping with me and then I killed him in his sleep :P And then I started working with Yes Man.

Choosing which side to ultimately side with was hard. On my way to New Vegas I initially helped the NCR, but when I got to New Vegas I thought Yes Man was adorable. I killed House and got the Platinum Chip back and then I was tasked to go find Caesar's Legion. Talking to them, what they wanted to do kind of made sense, although the rest of the Mojave area were making them out as the ultimate bad guys, so for a while there I was inclined to help the Legion. But after running around making sure to complete every side quest and every unmarked quest available I soon was left with very bad rep with the Legion. And in the end I liked the idea of running the show myself more than I liked the idea of the NCR taking over. So I forced the Legion to leave and threw the NCR general from a tower and then I ruled the Mojave and New Vegas alongside Yes Man.

Out of all the random NPCs I liked the female supermutants the most. I loved Tabitha and Lily. And although I ran out of time to help Lily, since I picked her up late and couldn't bring her with me for the DLCs I did love how the end turned out for Tabitha. Out of all the side quests my favourites were partly the one to help the ghouls get on a rocket and find their home somewhere beyond the stars, and also the one where I helped the Boomers lift an old fighter plane from the bottom of a lake and made their collective dream to fly a reality.

One of my least favourite side quests was the one in the Thorn where I had to go pick up eggs from different creatures so that they had creatures to raise for their gladiator games. One of the eggs I had to pick up were Deathclaw ones. I chose to do that at the quarry, but I soon realised that I was sort of under-leveled for that quest. But I pushed on and I found a spot on top of the digging machines where the Deathclaws couldn't reach me because they were too big and from the top of the digging machine I used my grenade launcher to slowly bomb them to death. It took a while, but it was fun to watch their health bars slowly decrease. When I got all the different eggs to the quest giver she rewarded me with sex xD

And then there were the DLCs. Usually with Bethesda the DLCs are way more epic than the main game. That was not the case this time. Separately the DLCs felt very meh. But when I had completed all of them I realised that a bigger story was unravelled and that they all fit together. Somehow it all started with the old leader of the Brotherhood of Steel, Elijah. He found himself at Big Mountain, at the Big Empty. There he heard of the Sierra Madre casino and all the riches supposedly hidden within. He went there and then lured others into helping him crack into the casino's vault. (That DLC was seriously annoying; a killing cloud, ghost people that you can't kill unless you chop them to pieces, and you're wearing a bomb collar that blows your head off if you're standing too close to a radio or a speaker.) I'm not sure of the chronology of the other courier. He was at the Big Empty at the same time as Elijah, but he was also in Zion, and then he lured my char into the Divide for the ultimate showdown. The DLCs were all connected in a way that I found beautiful. Finding the urban legend of the Legion, The Burned Man, alive in Zion was also pretty cool. I helped him in the end to create a genocide for the White Legs, so that the other two tribes could stay in Zion, rather than to force evacuate them. I felt the other tribes would be better off staying where they were. All in all the DLCs were not as impressive as in Fallout 3. My favourite DLC was Old World Blues in the Big Empty, because the whole DLC was tripping balls xD

Something I missed in New Vegas compared to 3 was all the crazy Vaults. In 3 all the Vaults had pretty much gone bad and you never knew what you'd find once you entered. In New Vegas there was really only one such Vault, number 22 where spores from the plants they were experimented on infected all the inhabitants and transformed them into spore carriers. The place was also full of carnivorous plants. This vault, however, showed up referenced in two of the DLCs: the origin of the spore plants was the biological research institute at the Big Empty, and it also showed up in Zion where you find an exploration party murdered by one spore carrier and the area infested with several carnivorous plants.

This game was summed up on Tumblr better than I ever could. So if you're wondering if the level of weirdness is as hilarious as I hint toward, then just read these to get confirmation:

I can definitely see myself replaying this game several times, if not only to see what the ending will be like if I choose to side with Mr. House, the Legion or the NCR.

Travelling: Germany 2016 day 6

The breakfast buffet at the hotel in Walsrode started at 6.30am and we went there five minutes later, which meant getting up even earlier than usual. They didn't have honeydew melon, but I could have salmon on my sandwich, which totally made up for it! After breakfast we repacked our bags, checked out and continued drivning north on the autobahn.  I fell asleep after a while.

The time was a little over 10am when we arrived at Fleggaard outside of Puttgarden for a bit of cheap shopping. Alcohol shopping. Alcohol is cheaper abroad than in Sweden, but candy is more expensive abroad than in Sweden. The candy thing is due to the EU having implemented a sugar tax, which Sweden could get out of.

When our shopping was done we got on the ferry from Puttgarden in Germany to Rødby in Denmark. It's a short ride: only 50 minutes. They are talking about building another bridge there but with all the border trouble nowadays that will probably be postponed. It was almost 11am when we got on the ferry and so we decided to get an early lunch.

When we left the boat we happened upon an ID control on the border, but we were let through without having to show. Either it was the Swedish car or we just didn't look like refugees. Probably the last.

It was only 2 hours left to Sweden and I spent most of the time on Facebook. Thanks to having Telia it costs the same in the Nordic and in the Baltics as in Sweden :)

I always enjoy crossing the bridge between Sweden and Denmark. It feels symbolic somehow, seeing my home rise out of the distance. It's like a transition. We arrived in my home town of Svedala outside of Malmö about 1.30pm. We unpacked the car and went to pick up the dog from the neighbour. He's been babysitting her during the day when we were in Germany and my mum at work. She was very happy to see us, and almost immediately my black clothes were covered in her white hairs xD

I'm staying at my parents place tonight and then I take the train home tomorrow. It's been fun, but I'm looking forward to coming home. Boyfriend, own bed, computer... In that order.

Tonight my dad is meeting with an Estonian guy who buys from him and then sells in the Baltics and Russia. So work is not entirely over, the way I see it.

And for some reason my laptop can't find my parents' new wi-fi. I had it on on my phone so I knew it worked, but my laptop couldn't find it, so I had to buy my train ticket via my phone (which is a hustle but I've done it before so it's alright), and now I'm doing this post on my phone. I've never liked blogging via my phone, though I've had the app forever. I think it's mostly due to the fact that a computer's keyboard is a lot more comfortable to type long things on than any phone's.

Now I'll return to my books. Hopefully I'll finish one of them by the time I'm home tomorrow :)

Travelling: Germany 2016 day 5

Honeydew melon was back for breakfast today! :D After breakfast we took all our things and brought them with us to the fair venue. There we deposited our things in the car and then went to work.

Yesterday I had managed to convince my dad to consider Japanese products so we went to visit the big company that would hardly even acknowledge me when I was there alone. But now we pretended that Dad, although he was the CEO, was very bad at English so I did all the talking :) We were met by a woman who politely listened to me and then when she thought it seemed interesting she brought two more representatives. By the end of our talks where I provided all the information about our company and Dad only asked questions in Swedish and I translated, we were given a big bag of samples to try along with a promise to keep in touch and find out more about cross-continent trading and requirements. The company is a really big conglomerate and has an office in many Southeast asian countries, so none of the representatives we talked with were Japanese so no Japanese for me :/ Afterwards we also went to take a look at the smaller company I talked with yesterday. There was another girl there now and we spoke English, although she was Japanese. My dad was allowed to try their nori snacks and their matcha sweets, and while he didn't really enjoy the nori ones (which I liked) he really liked the matcha ones (which I don't). By the end we got a few samples from that company as well. My dad seems really keen on the idea. In the beginning of the fair, last week, I had pitched the idea for him to go and look at the American companies, but he didn't seem that interested in them when he returned. It seems to be the total opposite with the Japanese companies, and that makes me very happy! :)

The fair itself was really slow today, not many visitors until just after lunch, about 2pm, when they let the ordinary people in and they grabbed just about every piece of confectionary that was not nailed down. I understand why they're called "the locusts" xD Those of us working in the Swedish area did manage to grab some things from each other before the locusts took everything, so now I have a nice bag filled with sweets :3 Now I don't have to buy anything for the train ride home on Friday xD

Although the official ending time was 6pm, we called it quits at 3.30pm. The halls were mostly empty except for workers and we saw no reason to hang around any longer. So we said goodbye to our friends (they were also leaving) and went to the car.

After about 3 hours on the autobahn we arrived at a small place called Walsrode. I haven't seen much since it's dark outside, but it seems to be in the middle of the woods. There is a hotel here that we're staying at for tonight. My dad stayed here when going home from Cologne last year. They hardly speak any English here, though, which makes it all very interesting. Faster wi-fi here, though! :D

Tomorrow afternoon we'll be back in Sweden.

The beginning of "the locusts"

Travelling: Germany 2016 day 4

Got up at 7am as per usual and went to have breakfast at the buffet. They were out of honeydew melon so I had to improvise :P

Work was kind of slow today, but because of that I did find the time to go visit the three Japanese companies that were there. The first one I went to was a small one and it was the first time they were there. The woman who approached me when I showed interest in their wares was very relived and excited when I knew Japanese, and we talked for a while about Japan and my studies and differences in candy in Japan and Europe. It was a lot of fun :) After that I went to look for the second small company, but they only sold cakes and nothing I found really interesting so I didn't stop there. Then I went to look up the big one. Turned out I already knew them when I went there, I recognised most of their products. But they were a big company with a big corner and had a no BS kind of attitude so I didn't get to talk with them. However, I did talk my dad into considering Japanese candy so we are going to go there together tomorrow and talk to them, and see if we can find something interesting that may work in Sweden. I'm excited! :D

After work we went quickly back to the hotel and changed clothes and freshened up and then we met up with some people at the Dominikaner, before going to a dinner we were invited to by another set of people. It was a fancy Italian restaurant, and while most of the other picked some sort of fish, I went with octopus and it was delicious :3 After dinner we went to Haxenhaus and ordered 1 metre of beer. When that was done, we did another metre. Then we went to Papa Joe's again for one more beer. I love Papa Joe's :3

Now it's time for packing and then sleeping, but first some pictures from the day!

Sign at Papa Joe's: "Every day without beer is a health risk"

1 metre of beer, anyone?

My dinner at the Italian place! Octopus!

This cathedral is friggin epic!

Travelling: Germany 2016 day 3

Today has been busy. Got up at 7am for hotel breakfast buffet and then went a little extra early to the fair venue. We were there around 8.30am. Both dad and the boss had several meetings planned from 9am to lunch time, so I was mostly left to my own devices at the counter. It went mostly well. The boss had his meetings in our corner so he was within asking distance if a customer had a question I couldn't answer. One of the people I talked to today was French. The first thing he asked was if I knew French and I said a little. He stated his business in French and I completeled blanked out and had no idea what he said. He noticed and we continued our conversation in English. I added some French words when I remembered them and I understood everything he translated into French to his two associates. Of course, after they had left I remembered how to say everything I had needed to say in French. Maybe I'll get another chance tomorrow.

From 10am to 4pm we had an almost steady stream of potential clients and so I didn't have time to realise how tired my muscles got after standing up for so long. Keeping busy to avoid feeling weary is always good, the problem is when you stop being busy and feel everything at the same time. At 5pm my dad left for a mingle party in the other end of the fair venue (the size of this thing is like 22 football (soccer) fields, I've been told), and just before 6pm the boss went too. They both said they wouldn't be long and probably would be back shortly after the fair closed at 6pm. At 6.15pm I called my dad and asked if they were on their way. They weren't and Dad told me to get over there. I left our stuff by our coats in the storage room of the Swedish area, and went down to their mingle party. We stayed there for about 30 minutes. I didn't mingle much. I didn't have much to contribute to their talks of B2B, shipments, weights, pallets, etc.

When we left it turned out we'd get an early night tonight. The people we had been out with yesterday and had planned on going out with again tonight were still tired after last night and cancelled our plans. Just as well, getting some more hours of sleep is sorely needed. So after a quick and cheap dinner at KFC we went back to our hotel. I took a long, relaxing shower (great for my weary muscles) and then read some in my French book. I understand everything I read and hear, I just have problems finding the words when I'm supposed to construct the sentences.

Now it's sleepy time anyway.

The slogan at the Swedish area

Travelling: Germany 2016 day 2

The day started at 7am when we went down for the hotel breakfast buffet. I could eat honeydew melon for life. Then we went to the fair venue and started work. It went well. I had no reason to worry about French and Japanese, no people with those languages as preference came around, but I did manage to make some contacts in English. This job is different from what I've done before. Before I've sold wares to customers who approached me, now it's my job to make them want to approach me. So I need to hand out sample bags and brochures and hope that they want to hand over their company card and make contact. It worked alright, but I'm told there will be more people tomorrow and on Tuesday. Still I had a blast. It was a lot of fun, the people are a big part of it. Everyone were so accomodating and friendly, most of them already knew my dad so I went along for the ride and got to know all of them.

After lunch I went with my dad to meet Vidal. They are his main distributor and very friendly. They are based in Spain and the contact we met today was also the contact that we went to dinner with when we were in Spain last spring. After the meeting we were invited for some tapas behind the scenes, and it was delicious. Afterwards we went around looking for new potential customers, and then we went back to our corner in the Swedish pavillion section of the European area. After a little while the fair closed and we went back to our hotel, before going out to have a beer at Haxenhaus and then dinner at Löwenbräu next door. After a delicious dinner we went across the street to Papa Joe's jazz club and had a blast. Now it's time for sleep, but first some pictures from the day.

Dawn. This is the view from my hotel window. Good morning, Colgone!

Going back to the hotel from the fair venue. This cathedral is immense! And so beautiful I can't stop looking at it whenever I walk past it - which is often.  

I've heard of hamburger and pizza candy, wanna try sushi candy?!

The inside of Papa Joe's :) Such a cosy atmosphere!

The live band at Papa Joe's!

January favourites 2016

January has felt like an eternity. Most of the time it's been cold as fuck. But here goes, some January favourites.

Books: I've read four books in January. The only reason I managed that many was because I decided I should read every day on the train to work, that's a total of 80 minutes reading a day, and it has worked surprisingly well. My favourite book, must be Himmelstrand by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Horror in the middle Swedish summer. It was fabulous.

Music: Too many favourites to choose from this month. So many days going to and from work ended up giving me a lot of tracks. But this is it, I think.
• Black Veil Brides - "Wretched and Divine"

• In This Moment - "Out of Hell"

• Lordi - "Something Wicked This Way Comes"

• Lovendor - "Ikujinashi"

• miwa - "Hikari e (English Version)"

• SPICA - "You Don't Love Me"

• Steam Powered Giraffe - Cellophane

• Street Drum Corps - Happy Christmas

• Morning Musume - "TIKI-BUN"


Games: It's been Fallout all month. First Fallout 3 and then Fallout: New Vegas. I did also start a new playthrough of Dragon Age: Inquisition one Monday when I wanted to play something but was too tired to play something that actually demanded my concentration. DAI worked well in that respect since I've played it so many times I know it by heart. But favourite game of this month has to be Fallout: New Vegas.

TV shows: This month I've watched Classic Doctor Who, New Who Xmas Sp, Call the Midwife, Heroes Reborn, The Big Bang Theory, Under the Dome, Da Vinci's Demons, and Rederiet. Favourite show from this month has to be Da Vinci's Demons. It was a little slow to get into, but by the latter half I couldn't stop watching!

Other things: Went to Germany for work!